space. Not much, but enough to bombard the hull with tiny particles. The radiation the Geigs picked up is caused by atomic disintegration! We've had fission and fusion for two hundred years now ... but this is the complete transmutation of matter to energy! The complete utilization of atomic energy! And the thing that causes it is the reaction between our kind of matter and...."

"Contraterrene matter!" he exclaimed. "That's it, isn't it Ivy?"

The girl nodded. "The charges of the atomic components are reversed in this space! You would have made yourself into a ... a bomb if you had touched that planetoid out there!" Her face paled. "Oh, Strike! You almost killed yourself!"

Thoughts were boiling around in Strykalski's head now. An idea ... a crazy, audacious idea was taking shape.

He swung his legs over the side of the bunk. "Listen, Ivy ... in this space, we are the unnatural form of matter, and here we are sort of walking bombs. Right?"

She nodded, puzzled.

"Well, what if we should transport some contraterrene matter back into prime-space ... a planetoid for example ... what then?"

The girl's face showed comprehension. "It would be the most devastating bomb ever dreamed of. It would release every erg in its component atoms the minute it came into contact with anything terrene!" She stopped short, her eyes wide. "Strike!"

"Would it work, Ivy?" he pursued.

"Yes!" she gasped, "Yes, I think it would!"

"Can we do it?"

"I ... I think so. Lover-Girl has power to burn. And we could set up the screens on two skeeterboats so that ... yes! By heaven, it will work! All we have to do is make and set up the equipment!"

Cob sat up on his bunk and gave a low whistle. "Ye gods! No one can ever accuse you two of having small ideas, that's for sure!"

"It will work!" Ivy insisted. Her eyes narrowed. She was all the engineer now, working out a problem. "The explosion that almost killed you and set Lover-Girl on her beam ends came from the annihilation of one tiny slug of steel at a distance of five miles. Just think what the destruction of a twenty mile planetoid will do when we...."

"How long will it take?" Strike interrupted.

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